“My business here,” Tom said, having recovered somewhat from the initial shock of near discovery, “I have already told you. I have rooms at Number 27 Perry Lane—near Oldham Stairs; you may inquire for me there.” And with that he turned and made as if to go.

  “Wait!” the old man cried. “You might almost do yourself—sir, would you engage to find a pauper for me? I would pay a pound—that is,” he added hastily, “ten shillings to you, and ten to him.”

  Tom’s first impulse was to accept this offer; but he reflected that too quick an agreement might awaken the Scottish doctor’s suspicions. “I am a gentleman, sir,” he said, “and gentlemen do not act for shillings. If you wish me to do as you ask, it must be for a guinea. But if your purposes are philanthropic, explain them to me; then should I approve, I’ll be your confederate for nothing.”

  “My friend,” Dr. McApple said, “they are the most philanthropic in the world; but I cannot explain them to you.”

  “What,” said Tom, “must charity be hid?”

  “At times it must. You will find me a poor man, you say, for a guinea. It is not a fair price, but I must accept—I had a beggar engaged to come, but it would appear that he has been detained, and my servant, who performs these offices for me, is on holiday. I cannot desert my guests, or be seen bringing such into my house, so I must ask help of you. A woman will suit me as well as a man, but no better. Bring who you will, but whomever you bring must be sober or nearly, and no Bedlamite. And destitute, you understand. They’ll have a good meal with me—you may tell them that. But be swift; you have no more than an hour, and, sir, it would be to our benefit if the thing were done in less.”

  Tom nodded and made off through the rain. His first thought was to fetch Mrs. Nedels herself, though he was by no means certain that he could find her and return with her in an hour’s time. He had gone but a few streets over, however, when he saw just such a person as Dr. McApple seemed to require. He was tall, but much stooped; and as he was using his coat to cover what appeared to be a large box carried around his neck by a strap, his sodden shirt, clinging to his body, showed ribs as distinct and unpadded as the pickets of a fence. Tom approached him, and the poor fellow’s face brightened for a moment as he saw him.

  “Birds, sir?” said he. “Would you care to buy a bird, young sir? It will sing in your room even when it’s as dark as this out. They makes a fine gift to a young lady.”

  “Birds?” asked Tom, for he did not at first quite understand what was meant.

  “Wrens!” said the birdman. “Robins and larks too. Just point out the chap you want, and I’ll have him out for you quick as a wink.” He drew his coat away from the box he carried, and Tom saw that there were indeed eight or ten damp, ruffle-feathered birds of various kinds inside, too tired and discouraged to flutter. “And I’ve a little basket wove that you can take the chap home in,” the coatless man continued, “though you must have a cage for him once you get him there.”

  “I don’t want one of your birds—” began Tom.

  “Very well, sir. Perhaps some other time.”

  “But I can put you in the way to earn ten shillings very easily. That’s as much as five of your birds cost, isn’t it?”

  “Well, sir,” the birdman said, “more normal—if you take my meaning—I gets three for them. Howsomeever, because of the rain and all, I would take two. But that’s just to you, sir, special like.”

  “But you’d rather have ten, wouldn’t you? Come along. You’ll get a good meal to boot.”

  Tom took a step in the direction of Dr. McApple’s house, and the birdman followed him, limping. “Please, sir, what am I to do?”

  “No heavy work, I promise you.”

  “Ah,” said the birdman, “that’s well. I’ve got this timber leg, sir, and I can’t do it. I would if I could, and that’s the truth.”

  “You seem to get along pretty well,” said Tom.

  “It’s not as bad as you would think, sir, for one that’s took off just below the hip,” said the birdman. He fell silent after this philosophical observation; and because Tom did not wish to encourage further questions, he was silent as well.

  It seemed odd to Tom to knock on the door he had watched so long; but he was eager to get out of the rain, and pounded violently. The birdman stood a pace or two behind him, tugging at his hat (Tom said) and looking doubtful. Dr. McApple himself let them in, paying no attention to Tom, but a great deal to the birdman, whom he shook most heartily by the hand, and directed to the kitchen, where he declared the cook had a meal waiting for him.

  When the birdman was gone, he turned to Tom. “There is a debt owing between us, sir,” he said, “that I will settle now,” (handing Tom two half-sovereigns and a shilling), “following which, I must ask you to leave.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Tom, and took the money. Then, seeing Dr. McApple turn away while his hand was still on the knob, he made a show of opening and closing the door, and stepped—exceedingly softly and silently, he says—behind the hall tree.

  For five minutes he remained there, hearing nothing and rather tickled about the nose by a greatcoat with a long nap. Then, venturing to peer out, he perceived that the doctor and his guests had assembled in a drawing room opening off the hall. Tiptoe he made his way to a spot near the entrance to this room, from whence he could hear all that was said.

  “It is very good of you, gentlemen, to assist me with my investigations.” This was Dr. McApple.

  “No, no.” “Not at all.” So said several voices; and another: “You are acquiring an outstanding reputation, Doctor. An acquaintance of mine in the City, Mr. Breedlove, has told me he considers you the only worthy successor to the great Franz Joseph Gall.”

  “Hardly,” said the doctor. “Though I thank ye both kindly. But now we have finished your readings, I should like to demonstrate a second science to ye—that of Mesmerism.”

  There was an excited murmur.

  “Or as others may call it,” continued Dr. McApple, “animal magnetism. In phrenology we deal with what I may call the most concrete of mental phenomena—the skull itself.”

  “Concrete—that’s good,” said a jolly voice. “No wonder they call us hard-headed businessmen.” “Be quiet, Parsons, and let the doctor speak—we can hear you anytime.”

  “As I was saying, we deal with the skull itself. Certain areas of the brain are responsible for specific mental qualities—humour, justice, judgment, temperance, strength of will, and the like. By palpating the skull, we can determine the development of these qualities in the individual under examination—just as I have done with you gentlemen. The elements of phrenology are now well established; the only thing left for researchers like myself is the resolution of apparent conflicts, the cases in which we find that a man’s behaviour does not correspond in all respects to what his skull tells us it should be.”

  “Your science is not perfected, then, I take it,” said the jolly voice.

  “No. It sometimes occurs that a combination of other qualities may serve to stifle one that appears well developed.”

  “I see. You said Waterford here was good-natured. But it might be that the bumps of argumentativeness and all-around obstinacy are so perfectly developed that no one would ever know it.”

  There was half a minute of general laughter; then the doctor said, “Something like that, yes,” and a new voice asked, “But what about Mesmerism? I think we all understand phrenology well enough, thanks to the trouble you have put yourself to on our behalf.”

  “It stands at the opposite pole,” declared Dr. McApple, “as I have already indicated. It is said to rely on the magnetic manipulation of impalpable ethers, and even that is dubious. But it can produce startling—though often short-lived—effects. You gentlemen have all been grist for one set of experiments, so I will not ask ye to volunteer yourselves for another—particularly since magnetic subjects seldom recall the experience afterward. There is a poor wretch in my kitchen whom I shall examine in your presence instead, allowing ye, as some small payment for the patience ye have shown me, to see how Mesmerism can be used as we have already used phrenology—to gauge the human qualities.”

  As the doctor finished speaking, there came the tinkle of a bell, and Tom, guessing correctly that this was a signal to the cook indicating that the birdman was to be brought to the drawing room, made haste to conceal himself behind the clothes tree again. In a few seconds he heard the sound of footsteps—the thumping of the birdman’s wooden leg, and the stolid tread of another. When the birdman had entered the drawing room, and the cook’s steps had returned once more in the direction from whence they had come, Tom crept out again, and took up his old post near the drawing room door.

  One of the visitors was saying: “How can you be certain the trance is complete?”

  “Watch.”

  For a moment, as Tom said afterward, the room was quiet as a church. Then there came a collective gasp of amazement, and someone asked: “Didn’t that hurt him?”

  “He feels nothing,” said Dr. McApple. “Now, John, you are bleeding, and it may get on my carpet. I want you to stop it.”

  There was silence again, until one of the men who had spoken earlier said, “Astonishing!”

  “In the trance state, ye see, even bodily functions that are involuntary in the normal course of things can be brought under the control of the magnetic operator. In this same way, we can learn the whole history of the poor man’s life—all with a veracity we could not be certain of were it not for the condition we have induced in him.”

  “Will it take long?”

  “I think not. That is another reason, ye understand, for employing a pauper as our subject—such poor people’s lives can be compressed into a simple narrative.”

  There was a pause; then Dr. McApple said: “John, I want you to tell these fine gentlemen the first thing you can remember, and then the next thing, and so on, until the present moment.”

  “That’s Mother.” (The birdman sounded sleepy, Tom thought, but not much different from the way he had on the street otherwise.) “She took in washin’, you know. I used to play in the water round her feet while she did it, and once I got hold of the soap and went to eat it, and she took it away—which perplexed me at the time, so I believe I cried. She had relatives in the country, I think, though I don’t know who they were. We used to go to see them when I was small, her carrying me part way. Sometimes we got a ride on a donkey cart goin’ home—possible they give her somethin’ to it, or possible it was them drivin’; I don’t know. Then when I was a big boy of six or seven I went to work in the rope-walk. ’Twasn’t an apprenticeship properly, for there was none to be served; but there was twenty or thirty of us boys; and some women too, combin’ hemp. It was hard on the hands; you could always tell those that was newly come to it by the claret on their fingers—ruddy-mittens was what they called us. There was a boy there that was from Somerset that everyone made a guy of for not talkin’ proper. But I liked him and I used to set by him, and it was him that taught me how to lime the birds.

  “We were goin’ to make a lark pie, was what we said, when we’d caught enough. Only we never did. I misdoubt we had the coppers to buy flour for the crust if we had. But he showed me how to mix the lime, and the way to take the little chaps off without harming them when they were glued in it.

  “After a time I couldn’t stand the work no more, so I ran home to Mother; only she was gone, and no one couldn’t tell me where. It may be that I never did come to the right house—I was just a little lad, you know. However that may be, I never saw her after. It’s my hope she married well—possible a butcher, for she often spoke of marryin’ a butcher or a sausage maker, having a liking for those trades, as she said, for they knew you couldn’t never get all the stains from their aprons, and didn’t demand it. Then she might have sent for me when she’d have reconciled the master to it, but I’d have been gone by then. But of course as a lad I never thought on all that—it never so much as entered my head. Instead I met another boy that was goin’ to ’list as a powder-boy; so I ’listed too, on the Swiftsure.

  “It all went well enough for me after that, except one time when I was a young man and decided I’d stay on in Spain, havin’ tooken a liking to some people there. My captain got wind of that and sent eight marines after me, and I was flogged on four ships for it, and lucky to have lived. Then I lost my leg—wasn’t shot off like you might think, ’twas mashed when the slings broke and a gun fell on it.

  “So that was the end of sailorin’ for me. I’m a man what doesn’t know his letters, but I’d have said I knew a lot… Why, I could manage most any sort of boat in any weather you please, and make rope or tie all kinds of knots you might wish, or mend sail, or do carpenter’s work. I can load a gun too, and fire it off, and before I got this spar limb I was a good hand for layin’ aloft. But the only thing that has been of any service to me lately was what that Somerset boy taught—liming birds.

  “I make my lime and carries it far enough out of the town to catch them (main hard that is, for it makes my stump sore), then brings them back and sells them as I can. Today was bad, the weather bein’ so chill and wet. There’s a place you can sleep in for threepence, but there’s another I like better for seven; and then I needed somethin’ to buy somethin’ for my birds with. Grain is good enough for some, but there’s others that requires a smatterin’ of meat. I can buy catsmeat for ha’pence, but that’s no help if I don’t have ha’pence.”

  Dr. McApple said, “Do you know where you are now?” “In a gentleman’s house.”

  “And how old are you?”

  “That I don’t know for certain; but by my way of reconing, rising fifty years.”

  “Have you ever wished to be young again, John?”

  “Oh, aye. I suspose we all want that, one time or another.”

  “You are going to get your wish. You are mistaken, you see, about your age. You are still only a boy—do you understand?”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “A small boy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “In fact, it is the day you came home from the rope-walk, looking for your mother. It is that very minute. You are knocking at the door of your old home.”

  Tom said he held his breath when he heard this, for he didn’t know what would happen. For half a heartbeat or so, nothing did. Then he heard three knocks, tap… tap… tap… spaced a long time apart, and a voice that might have been a child’s say, “Mama? Mama?”

  Tap… tap.

  “Mama? Mama, are you in there? Mama? Mama, let me in.” (The tapping continuing all this time.)

  One of the visitors said: “By heavens, he’s beginning to weep. This is quite amazing, Doctor.”

  “MAMA!”

  “How long will he remain like this?”

  “For hours, unless I order him to desist.”

  “It’s Johnny, Mama! Sir, please, sir, have you seen my mother? Do you know if she is to home?”

  “He won’t become violent, will he?”

  “It’s very unlikely.”

  “Sir, please, sir, does she live here still?”

  “I think we had better go. Are you coming, Parsons?”

  The tapping continued, but Tom did not wait to hear more of it. He was on the point of secreting himself once more behind the hall tree, when he considered that as the guests took their departure they would also take their coats, leaving him revealed like the naked trunk of a beech in autumn. There was no other place in which he might conceal himself; he was about to throw open the door and run for it, when the first of the guests stepped into the corridor.

  Tom would still have decamped even then, but a bit of a law case he had recently read, in which flight was adduced in court as evidence of guilt, came into his head and convinced him that it might be better to stay. He had, after all, entered the house in its owner’s employ, and he could argue, if need be, that he had never been directly dismissed, and had remained in the hope of being of further service.

  With this in mind, he opened the door, and assisted the gentlemen with their coats, and otherwise acted as it might be expected a major-domo would. He saw the old Scottish doctor’s face harden when he saw him, but he said nothing, and Tom contrived to ignore him.

  When the last of the guests had gone, the doctor himself went to the door and shut it. “You’ve rain upon your cheeks,” said he.

  “I suppose I do,” responded Tom.

  “Possibly your eyes have been watering from the wind.”

  “That may be. May I ask where my birdman is?”

  “Sleeping now. I take it you were listening to us.”

  “I was, yes.”

  “It did him no harm, you may be sure. And he will remember naught when he wakes.”

  “You think that I am a pryer and a spy,” said Tom, “and I don’t blame you for it. But I am a friend to the mother of a girl you have used as you used that unfortunate man tonight; it is at her instigation that I have taken the liberties I have today.”

  “Did this girl suffer by coming here?” Dr. McApple inquired. His frown had lightened somewhat.

  “No, sir. She was greatly benefitted—at least, for a time.”

  “I recall the girl. I made a suggestion I felt would be to her improvement while she was in the trance state. Can you tell me how long it remained effectual?”

  “A fortnight, I believe.”

  “That is longer than most. I attempt to help these people when I can, though that is not my real business.”

  “May I be so bold,” said Tom, greatly daring, “as to ask what your real business may be?”

  “Pity.” The doctor’s frown was entirely dispersed by this time, an expression of deep sadness having replaced it. “It is my theory that an area just here—” he reached up, and before Tom could object, touched the left side of his head, above and behind the ear, “controls pity of the sort that persons of wealth might be expected to feel toward the destitute.”